Business community needs to change to exploit opportunities -PM

The business community needs to change mindsets and become more aggressive and outward looking to benefit from emerging opportunities. Prime Minister Mizengo Pinda made the call yesterday when speaking to representatives of various business interests in Dar es Salaam. He said that the business community has learnt diverse business environments and explored new opportunities. The community can also advise the government on the best policies that the country can adopt to compete at the regional level. “There was a time after independence we were left behind because of the policies we adopted…but that has to change now and we have to rid ourselves of policies and attitudes that do not benefit us in a competitive environment,” he said. Delegates of the Trade, Business and Investment Mission from Tanzania will from tomorrow to September 16 visit four countries of East Africa to familiarize themselves with counterpart business communities and to secure business opportunities. “We are badly lagging behind while our neighbours in the region are running faster because of their policies since independence. We also changed about twenty years ago but we have to wake up and chase those opportunities that we missed,” said the Prime Minister. He observed that while the government previously regarded business as capitalism ideologically, times have changed and forced it to move with time, a development that made it ready to support the business community in the country at any cost. "It was encouraging to see the biggest contributions of the private sector that has helped authorities to collect revenues from 25bn/- when the country adopted trade liberalization policies in 1990s to nearly 400bn/- per month now," said the PM. He pledged that the government in collaboration with Tanzania Private Sector Foundation (TPSF) would strive to support the private sector. Mr Pinda at the same time urged business men who would participate in the East African business tour to challenge it on how best the country can trade in the region. “Sometimes when we travel around developing countries and it pains to learn that their development was the result of full involvement of the private sector. I just ask myself what our problems with the trade is and what we should do to overcome them,” he added. The Prime Minister said, the business community has also to learn the crucial mission of investing in agriculture especially irrigation farming. He mentioned an example of Kenya that has huge farms because of modern technology it uses. He pointed out that Tanzania has nearly 30 million hectares of land potential for irrigation farming, but only 0.3 million hectares were cultivated. That obviously was not healthy to the country, he cautioned. He called for the local governments to change and encourage interested agricultural investors to invest and stop giving excuses of environmental destructions. He maintained that outdated environmental regulations in the local governments were obstacles to real developments. The PM said the business delegates were to curiously study which East African country was benefiting from Lake Victoria and how it managed to do so. He said there were reports that neighbouring countries were harvesting a lot from the lake and challenged them to study that situation and report back. However, he called on the business community to remain loyal to the country and pay all statutory revenues. He said the government’s doors were open to them. That, Pinda added, was why the Government was doing some amendments in various revenue policies and soon it would look into the mining sector. Available statistics, according to the Prime Minister, show that Tanzania was importing more from the region compared to exports. In 2001, for instance, Tanzania exported goods with the value of 51bn/- while in 2007 it imported goods worth 127bn/-. “Let us open up supermarkets in those countries, open branches of our companies and even build schools and effectively compete as we approach the open market. TPSF can always achieve that through set programmes and the government is always there to support you,” he said. The delegation of about 45 businessmen will leave for Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi on a tour that will be sponsored by TPSF who will pay 50 per cent of the costs under the special three-year World Bank programme. Another 50 per cent will met by the business communities.